By ART LAWLER - Staff Writer
December 12, 2007 05:22 pm
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Henderson County and its County Seat have a problem. That means you’ll eventually have a problem, too.
It’s only a matter of time, not now, not tomorrow, but sometime soon, when you’ll be asked to pass a bond issue that will determine what the county can do to meet its immediate and future facility needs.
County officials and Athens community leaders, as you may or may not know, have held one historic joint meeting to talk about the problem.
City officials have also spoken at two county commissioners meetings since.
The catalyst was a decision by the commissioners to meet county expansion problems by purchasing 44 acres of land out on Loop 7.
That decision has been delayed for 90 days, at the city’s urging.
Most of you have done business with the county, and you know it’s often a case of going from one building to another in offices near, and not-so-near, the courthouse square.
Those in surrounding buildings in this hodge-podge solution are fast running out of space.
The courthouse hardly needs more stuffing. It needs to be restored to its original splendor through Texas Historical Society grants, something that should have been continued after it was brought up during the “mold fiasco” in the courthouse a few years ago.
But getting back to the problem at hand.
Attorneys and judges can often be seen carrying papers to and from the courthouse to the judicial center a block and a half away. Courtrooms are being shared, too.
If population trends continue as expected, the county will be in big trouble in the coming years, especially if it decides to expand only after the problems are acute.
Nobody’s arguing that.
There are big differences about where such expansion plans should take place.
When city officials in Athens heard of plans to purchase the 44 acres on the loop, they held up their respective hands and said, “No, please don’t do this.”
And well they should have put up their hands.
Athens’ very identity is greatly tied up in the Henderson County Courthouse.
Think not?
Try imagining the city of Athens without that courthouse. It becomes just another small East Texas town.
Nobody is advocating moving the entire courthouse out to the loop, though some people have actually expressed that belief.
Rival communities often resent their county seat communities, and Athens is no different. But this one, located in the center of the county, is the place where county residents gather to honor fallen peace officers each year. It’s the place where shaken county residents gathered to pray while mourning in the aftermath of 911.
It’s the place where some of the best fiddlers in the country come to compete each year. It has its tall trees and a beautiful, if sometimes troubled, courthouse building. And inside it, a century of justice has been dispensed.
In other words, it bleeds Henderson County tradition.
Yet, building a records management facility on the loop, and bringing other county offices to that site, also has a lot of merit.
Getting county services under one big roof is convenient, simplifies security issues and is probably more accessible to the majority of county residents than all those offices in downtown Athens.
Still, would moving part of the courthouse offices, but not all of the county services to the loop be the answer? Wouldn’t you still have a hodge-podge situation?
Unless you put all courthouses on the loop, you’d still have lawyers and judges doing a lot of running around.
It may be inconvenient now, but government officials and attorneys can usually walk from place to place. If part of the services were on the loop, everyone would have to get in a car and drive back and forth, sometimes several times a day.
And what about the law offices located near the courthouse? Would they move out of downtown Athens to be close to the loop facilities, leaving Athens as an emerging ghost town?
County officials have agreed to back off the purchase for 90 days to give city officials a chance to come up with an alternative, but the feeling expressed by some is that city officials won’t be able to find enough contiguous “dirt” in downtown Athens to accomodate the county’s needs.
What to do, what to do?
Glad you asked. If the following happens, or something close to it, not only will it solve the county’s space needs for the next 20 years and beyond, it will also help to revitalize downtown Athens.
Granted, both entities will have to give a little. Not all that much, when you think about it.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to go to downtown Athens and figure out where the new building should be located.
Forget about the Ginger Murchison Foundation building that has been offered, at least for now.
If you move through the lights going east on Tyler, and look off to your left, you’ll see a Sprint store, a nail salon, a bridge club, the gutted Texan Theatre, and a car lot.
If you go behind those businesses on State Highway 19, you’ll see a city parking lot, then across the street, the old county jailhouse, and some metal buildings to its side.
A huge building conceivably could be built on the corner across from the courthouse, and would have enough space behind it for all kinds of parking.
BUT: The city would have to give up that parking lot, and the county would have to get rid of the old county jail, something it should have done years ago, but continues to keep valuable records in a precarious way inside, because of space problems.
If that was done, you’d have succeeded in providing “contiguous dirt” from the square to the railroad track going north, and for a block to the east, and for about half a block going north across the street past the old jailhouse.
Somewhere in that amount of space is all the room needed for the proposed building, and the parking space to go with it. If the county wants more space, it can build up — not just out.
Nothing else, by the way, works for downtown Athens. If that can’t be accomplished, the county will probably have no choice but to exercise the loop option.
One other corner, it could be argued, would be on Corsicana where the Ginger Murchison Foundation building is located. That’s fine, but in and of itself, it’s not enough to accomodate the county’s needs. Even if you built up, you’d have only succeeded in exacerbating the parking situation.
Just behind it is the Franklin Bank drive-in bank area. You’d have to leap frog that area, then you’re in the process of negotiating with other businesses. You’d still have your hodge-podge affect, just further from the courthouse.
Getting back to the other corner, though, the new building could, and should, be built with the same colored brick and mortar that was used on the courthouse.
The architecture of such a building should also be heavily influenced by the architecture of the courthouse. Think that wouldn’t improve the attractiveness, not to mention efficiency of the County Seat?
It’s 189 steps, according to one woman who stepped it off, from the current city parking lot to the courthouse. If the building was in front of all those parking areas, it’d simply be a matter of crossing the street.
You would actually be extending the tradition, both in day-to-day court business, and in the traditional atmosphere that has served the county and the city of Athens so well all these years.
But, you say, what about those merchants on Tyler Street? Look, I can’t solve everything. Negotiate with them. There are plenty of empty buildings right on the square which might be of interest.
As for the historic preservation of the Texan, there’s nothing there now but two walls, filled in by grass and dirt. And it’s been that way for years.
Get rid of this eyesore and take the Texan preservation idea, and old blueprints, and make them fit inside the Stowe’s building, which the county owns. Historic sites are often moved a few feet from their original location. It’d be on the square, too.
That idea, in fact, should be moved up on the agenda. A classic movie, opry, downtown facility, which opens only for special occasions, or maybe for regular bridge games, could add much to the downtown area.
Now, then, just in case there are a few toes I haven’t stepped on by now, let me go ahead and finish the job:
The Murchison building, which I understand has been offered, should be torn down and replaced — don’t get crazy now — by a multi-level parking garage.
No, no, I don’t mean one of those ugly garages you sometimes see in the big cities. I’m talking about one that would have, once again, the same bricks and mortar as the courthouse. It could be quite attractive.
It could also alleviate one of the downtown area’s biggest problems. Parking issues have discouraged people from shopping and spending time in the downtown area of the County Seat for years.
It would also need a back entrance only, which might require a little negotiating with the banker boys.
But here’s the beauty of it. People don’t come to downtown Athens often enough because of those consarned stoplights.
Traffic could pull into the parking garage before it reached the world’s longest stoplights, and the customers could walk out the front and right onto the streets of Athens. At least that’d work for residents visiting the County Seat from the west side of the county.
Build it, the businesses and the shopping traffic will come.
The current heavy influence of government facilities would stay there in the heart of the county seat.
The city might feel it can’t provide that much land, or at least help provide it. That’s certainly understandable. Like I say, the other option has a lot of merit, too.
As a taxpayer, you’re a stakeholder in all of this.
What is your soul telling you to do?
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